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Shopify vs WooCommerce: the real 3-year cost (UK)

Enter your store profile to see a year-by-year GBP breakdown, including the costs both platforms tend to gloss over: Shopify's third-party gateway skim and WooCommerce's dev-time inflation.

pricing verified

Monthly orders
Average order value
£
Payment mix
Other
5%

Other (Apple Pay, Klarna, …) is processed at the card rate.

Build & maintenance (WooCommerce)

Build days cover theme, products, payments, shipping config, GDPR/cookie consent, and basic security/perf hardening. Default £500/day reflects a competent UK Woo freelance rate; drop to £150–200 if self-building, or raise to £800–1,200 for agency tier. Maintenance baseline is ~4 hours/month (updates, security patches, plugin compatibility).

3-year total

Shopify costs £11,764 less than WooCommerce over 3 years.

Shopify (Basic)
£26,719
WooCommerce (Growth)
£38,483

/ year-by-year breakdown

LineYear 1Year 2Year 3
Shopify
Plan£228£228£228
Card processing£2,784£5,568£8,352
PayPal processing£979£1,958£2,938
Third-party gateway skim£576£1,152£1,728
Shopify total£4,567£8,906£13,246
WooCommerce
Hosting£300£300£300
Domain£12£12£12
Card processing£2,112£4,224£6,336
PayPal processing£979£1,958£2,938
Maintenance£3,000£3,000£3,000
Build (one-off)£10,000£0£0
WooCommerce total£16,403£9,494£12,586